DURING the World War, Mr.
Julian R. Tinkham, of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, inserted a
series of advertisements in the New York Evening Post which
called attention to the absurdity of permitting advertisers to
induce the people to increase the consumption of foods and other
essentials while the government was at the same time urgently
advocating their conservation. Mr. Tinkham said "Advertising
is NonEssential--Tax it!" At the very time that the government
was, as a war measure, striving to curtail all the non-essential
activities of the nation and concentrate its man-power upon the
essential industries, the volume of advertising increased by leaps
and bounds. Thousands and thousands of men rushed into the advertising--supported
industries because of the "easy money" flowing in golden
streams into advertising to escape the excess-profits taxes.

In attempting to justify the diversion of so much
man-power into advertising, Printer's Ink published a reply
to criticisms like Mr. Tinkham's which it entitled "Advertising
Keeps the World from Starving."

Poor old world! It has had its years of plenty
and its years of want, but it has somehow or other managed, in
spite of lean years and famine spots, to keep itself alive during
all the ages before advertising was invented. But now we are told,
it is dependent upon advertising!

In precisely the same way, we are told by all the
advocates of high pressure marketing that each and every one of
their inventions is essential to the existence of civilized society.
We are dependent upon high pressure distribution; we are dependent
upon high pressure salesmanship; we are dependent upon high pressure
credit. Without manufacturer domination of wholesaling and retailing,
there would be no convenient stores to supply what the manufacturers
want us to want when and where we desire it. Without the instructions
of manufacturer demonstrators and canvassers and salesmen we would
not be able to use the products which they have developed. Without
installments, presumably, we would be not only without pianos,
furniture, and automobiles, but we would also be without clothes-which
we are told must be also sold on installments if they are to survive
in the face of the competition of the many products which are
sold on credit.

Is high pressure marketing really essential to
our present existence and future progress? Has it really helped
us in any way?

We have seen that, while the cost of producing
things has gone down year by year, the price we have had to pay
for them has gone up. We have seen the manufacturers of these
products spending millions and millions yearly in national advertising.
We have unravelled the process by which the high pressure marketing
has enabled them to get out of the way of competition and to secure
the highest prices for their products that the traffic would bear.
We have seen how they have capitalized their profits, and created
millions in "good will" by levying a pickpocket's petty
tribute upon the unsuspecting public. We have seen how they have
raised prices by arbitrarily reducing from time to time the quantity
packed in their cartons and cans. We have exposed the fact that
they create superiorities for their products which are non-existent,
and that when they do exist that they used them for the purpose
of grossly overcharging for their goods.

The number of articles and commodities which are
being marketed in this way increases every year.

Prices rise as competition changes in one line
after another from a "price and quality" basis to an
advertising created "consumer demand" basis.

It is getting increasingly difficult for people
to think of living at all except in terms of trademarked goods.

The whole economy of our lives has been revolutionized
by national advertising.

What are we to do?

When Alexander came to ancient Gordium, the future
conqueror of Asia was told that, according to the ancient oracle,
whoever succeeded in untying the knot of cornel bark which bound
the yoke to the pole of the cart of Gordius should reign over
all Asia. Instead of assuming that the oracle required the unravelling
of the famous Gordian knot, he cut the knot by a stroke of his
sword.

Instead of assuming, in the face of the situation
with which consumers are confronted, that Congress must pass some
law to tax manufacturers, or to regulate distribution, consumers
should simply ignore the manufacturers' propaganda and stop
buying high priced goods whenever it is possible to buy equally
as good products for less money.

If the consumer is purchasing for an average size
family, he can, by consistently buying merchandise which is economically
marketed, buy precisely the same qualities and quantities of food,
clothing, and sundries, and yet save from ten to twenty-five cents
out of every dollar he spends.

There is only one rule which consumers must follow.

When an article is nationally advertised, or
offered on any other basis than grade, style, and price------stop,
look, and listen!

Consumers should give it the "third degree."
First degree: What is the real cost?

Not what is the cost of the package, but what is
the cost of the amount of goods in the package, is the question.
A three and a half ounce glass of chipped dried beef which sells
for twenty cents may seem like twenty cents' worth of goods, but
if the consumer finds out that he is paying over ninety cents
per pound for the meat, (which his grandmother thought worth about
ten cents a pound), he may decide that he can save himself a whole
lot of money by buying his meat in some other form. To determine
the real value, he must first learn the cost per pound, per ounce,
per quart, per pint, and then compare the cost of the proposed
purchase with the price he would have to pay for the same quantity
of some other product which could be used with equal satisfaction.

Second degree: Of what does the product consist?

This question may seem like an inquiry as to whether
a hungry man ought to eat. So long, however, as manufacturers
like to masquerade their product under names that have nothing
to do with the goods to which they are attached, it is really
a liberal education to learn about the ingredients of which they
are composed.

The name of a baking powder tells very little about
the ingredients of which it is composed. If a housewife asks for
baking powder, and the grocer offers her the choice of three or
four brands, isn't it natural for her to buy the baking powder
with the most familiar name? But if she asks for a cream of tartar
baking powder, and is offered her choice of three or four brands
of cream of tartar powders, she is in position to buy the brand
which offers her the best value for her money. She then knows
that the ingredients in all the cans being substantially the same,
the lowest price powder is the best value. Knowledge of what the
product consists is essential if she is to buy a similar product
in bulk or packed under some other name.

Third degree: What can be used as an alternative
to the extravagantly marketed article, everything considered?

When the consumer buys any article, it is bought
for the service which can be secured from it. If the same service
can be secured from two different articles, and one article costs
less money than the other, the consumer ought to buy the less
costly article if only to be able to spend the difference for
something that could otherwise not be purchased.

A nationally advertised fat is recommended "For
Frying, For Shortening, For Cake Making." These are the services
for which the housewife would buy it, but if she can purchase
an equally good fat that will render her the same service for
less money, why should she pay the "few extra pennies"
which the manufacturers admit in their advertising she has to
pay every time she buys the nationally advertised fat. The nationally
advertised fat is a chemically hardened cotton seed oil. If the
manufacturer asks more for it than is asked for old-fashioned
lard, just because he spends a fortune yearly in advertising,
there is no good reason for the consumer to blindly accept his
own claims about its superiority as a good enough reason to pay
higher prices for cooking fat. Why buy one of the cheapest vegetable
oils at an excessive price just because the manufacturer has managed
to make a passable imitation of lard from it--when it is possible
to buy the genuine lard made without the aid of the artificialities
of inorganic chemistry? If it is possible to secure the same service
from butter, oleomargarine, or lard, and these products are less
expensive than the advertised fat, why buy the nationally advertised
fat?

This matter of finding substitutes for extravagantly
marketed and nationally advertised articles is the real difficulty
which meets those who would like to apply the common-sense, which
a business man applies to buying for his business, to the buying
of things for consumption. Fortunately, when the price of a nationally
advertised article is excessive, it is nearly always possible
to use an alternative article with equal satisfaction. If one
lacks knowledge of a suitable substitute, and has the old American
hatred of being "played for a sucker," one can always
do without until something that is really either "just as
good" or a little better is found.

Locating an alternative article is doubly important
when considering the purchase of a newly advertised product. It
is a good plan to let the "easy marks" and the spendthrifts
who can afford it, do the experimenting with such products. National
advertising is often, it is true, used very effectively for the
purpose of educating the public to the uses of some new product.
But today it performs this educational function at too high a
price. If all national advertising consisted of this sort of educational
advertising, the cost of introducing a new article would be greatly
reduced. The advertising of new articles would then have the field
to itself and would not have to compete for attention with the
vast volume of advertising now devoted to "boosting"
staple articles.

An army of American housewives applying a judicious
skepticism toward nationally advertised articles would promptly
shrink the volume of advertising until what remained might perform
a useful educational function at a lower cost than the work could
be done in any other way.

That the cost of living of any family buying along
these lines would be reduced by the amounts saved in buying, is
obvious. Suppose, however, that hundreds of thousands of families
were to follow the policy I have advocated. What would happen?

There would be a sharp drop in the price of articles
now advertised and a sudden increase in the size of their packages.
The national advertisers would be forced to meet the competition
of the unadvertised articles on the basis of price and quality
or see their brands swept off the markets. No increase in the
amount of their advertising would help them to dodge the brutal
necessity of honestly meeting the question of "What is your
product worth, and how much are you asking for it?" On the
contrary, as the advertising would be the very thing which would
warn consumers to "Stop, look, and listen," any increase
in the amount of their advertising would merely make buyers more
cautious and more intent upon locating "the nigger in the
woodpile."

Faced with the necessity of reducing the prices
on their merchandise, the manufacturers would have to reduce their
expenditures for high pressure marketing. There would be a great
shrinkage in the amounts appropriated by them for advertising.
With the reduction in the volume of advertising, there would be
fewer billboards to disfigure our landscapes, while our newspapers
and magazines would shrink to convenient sizes. Magazine--monstrosities
which, despite the postal regulations, are circulated principally
f r advertising purposes, would collapse like toy-balloons which
had been pricked with a pin. The magazines which desired to survive
the change would be forced to improve the quality, rather than
as now to increase continually the quantity, of their stories
and articles, since they would be forced to rely upon their readers
instead of their advertisers for support. They would naturally
devote most of their attention to the interests of the consumers
of the country, instead of as now coloring what they print in
the interests of their advertisers. "Whose food I eat, his
song I sing," is true of our present periodical press. If
the food they lived upon came from readers instead of from advertisers,
they would find writers who would strikes notes entirely different
from prevailing tunes.

With the reduction in the demand for paper to be
used for printing magazines and newspapers, our forests would
not be sacrificed so rapidly to make paper pulp now being converted
into advertising space at the rate of trainloads daily. The conservation
of our forests would furnish us lumber for building houses and
for furnishing them. What the advertisers and publishers would
lose, the consumers of the nation would gain in lower costs of
everything into which lumber entered.

The fungus-like publishing and advertising industry
would be deflated.

But the biggest deflation would come in the reduction
of the terrible price paid by the consumers of the nation for
the support of our vast armies of salesmen. Thousands and thousands
of salesmen have been recruited over a period of many years from
the most aggressive types of manhood produced on our farms and
in our factories. For many years energy and constructive thought,
which should have been devoted to production and transportation,
has been devoted to selling and salesmanship.

The salesman is an essential cog in our present
machinery of distribution, but we have come to look upon what
is merely a cog in the machine as the motive power of the whole
process of production and consumption. The salesman who is called
a "producer," the man who can get the orders, is considered
a more important person in many businesses than the man who can
make the goods or the customer for whom they are made. The occupation
of the salesman--it is important to bear in mind that all advertising
men are fundamentally merely salesmen--has been exalted until
in the estimation of the young man of today, selling and advertising
rank with engineering, teaching, medicine, and law.

Selling should be an economical method of bringing
production and consumption in touch with one another. But national
advertising, by increasing the number of brands, and the number
of salesmen required to sell the brands, and what is worse, creating
army after army of salesmen who have things to sell which are
supposed to help the grand army of all salesmen to sell, has added
to the cost of distributing merchandise one item after another
until the cost of selling exceeds the cost of making the merchandise
itself.

The army of salesmen, specialty salesmen, demonstrators,
and salesmanagers; the army of advertising men; of salesmen selling
magazine, newspaper, and billboard space; of salesmen selling
advertising agency service, and salesmen selling art-work, engraving,
electrotypes, printing, and paper, is badly in need of demobilization.

What a healthier and happier nation ours would
be if the number of artists, physicians, farmers, and mechanics
were increased, and the number of salesmen and clerks decreased!
We need lower priced food and less expensive machinery and buildings.
We desperately need a more beautiful environment. If that portion
of our national man-power which is most adaptable and aggressive,
which is now engaged in diverting more and more of the national
income into the sterile field of selling, were to be drafted into
the arts and crafts and into production and transportation, the
whole current of our economic stream would be changed. It would
move more slowly, but it would be a deeper stream. What production
might lose in speed, would be made up by the increase in its thoroughness,
and the quality and durability of the products.

We in this country have overestimated the efficiency
of laws as measures of reform, and have underestimated the power
of direct action. During the American revolution the efforts of
Great Britain to tax our tea were defeated not by the passage
of laws in the various colonies, but by the simple expedient of
our refusing to buy the tea. Parliament passed laws which, by
means of rebates and drawbacks, actually made tea cheaper in the
Colonies than in Great Britain. Yet so effective was the direct
action of the colonists that the tea merchants of Great Britain
begged Parliament to revoke the taxes long before a single important
battle had been fought in the Colonies.

Instead of looking to a law to save us from the
economic burden imposed by high pressure marketing, we can save
ourselves.

We can simply mark off of our buying lists every
product whose maker refuses to sell upon the basis of price, quality,
and style in competition with the products of all other manufacturers.
Self-interest dictates that we buy in this way. As in almost all
cases, enlightened self-interest and the truest public spirit
are one and the same.